Dean Guitars parent Armadillo ordered to pay Gibson more than $4 million in legal fees

Armadillo Distribution Enterprises, the Tampa company behind Dean Guitars, Luna Guitars and ddrum, has been ordered to pay Gibson more than $4 million to cover the legal costs of their long-running trademark fight, the latest blow to a local instrument maker that filed for bankruptcy protection this summer.

The total comes to $4,046,444.05, made up of $235,417.92 in litigation costs and $3,811,026.13 in attorney's fees, according to reporting by Guitar.com and Guitar World. The award stems from a federal lawsuit Gibson filed in Texas in 2019 over guitar body shapes that the Nashville-based company says are its trademarks.

A dispute over iconic shapes

At the heart of the case are some of the most recognizable silhouettes in rock music. Gibson introduced the angular Flying V and the Z-shaped Explorer in the 1950s, followed by the semi-hollow ES-335 and, in 1960, the SG, according to a 2024 federal appeals court opinion in the case. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Gibson registrations for the body shapes, its dove-wing headstock and the Hummingbird name.

Dean's history runs nearly as deep. Dean Zelinsky founded Dean Guitars in 1976 in Evanston, Illinois, and the brand released its Dean V and Dean Z models in January 1977, according to the appeals court. Players from bands including Kansas, Heart, Def Leppard and ZZ Top used Dean instruments in the 1980s. Armadillo, led by the late Elliott Rubinson, acquired the brand in the 1990s and moved its operations to Tampa, where it has continued to produce guitars based on the original Dean V and Dean Z designs.

Armadillo later added the Luna Athena acoustic in 2010, which the court described as similar to Gibson's ES-335, a Luna model called the Hummingbird, and in 2013 the Gran Sport, which resembled Gibson's SG.

Two trials and an appeal

The two companies had clashed long before the lawsuit. In 2004, Concordia applied to register a winged headstock design, and Gibson opposed it, arguing it was too close to Gibson's dove-wing headstock. The parties drafted an agreement that year under which Armadillo would license the Flying V and Explorer shapes and pay Gibson royalties, but the deal was never completed, according to the Fifth Circuit. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board denied Concordia's application in 2009, finding the Dean headstock likely to cause confusion. Gibson revived the dispute in 2015, and talks stalled while Gibson went through its own Chapter 11 reorganization in 2018.

Gibson sued Armadillo and Concordia Investment Partners, Armadillo's intellectual property holding company, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in 2019, alleging trademark infringement and counterfeiting involving four body shapes, one headstock shape and two word marks. The case was filed May 14, 2019.

The first trial began May 16, 2022. After 10 days, a jury found that Armadillo infringed Gibson's trademarks and marketed counterfeits of the Flying V, Explorer and SG body shapes and the Hummingbird name. But the jury also found that Gibson had waited too long to assert some of its claims and that it suffered no actual damages, awarding just $4,000 in statutory damages, according to the appeals court's summary of the verdict. Gibson had sought far more; it alleged about $7 million. The trial court nonetheless granted Gibson a permanent injunction barring sales of the infringing products.

In July 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed and ordered a new trial. The appellate panel held that the trial court had abused its discretion by excluding "wholesale decades of third-party-use evidence" that Armadillo had offered to argue that Gibson's shapes had become generic, a defense that could have defeated the trademark claims.

The retrial in Texas, held in March 2025, again went largely Gibson's way. The jury upheld protection for the SG, Explorer and Flying V body shapes, as well as the Flying V and Hummingbird word marks, according to Guitar.com. But the jury found Gibson's ES body shape to be generic, a partial win for Armadillo.

A judge later ordered Dean to stop producing its Gran Sport, Dean V and Dean Z guitars following the verdict, according to Guitar.com. The Dean V and Dean Z had been part of the brand's identity since 1977.

Bankruptcy and a family dispute

The fee award arrives months after Armadillo Distribution Enterprises and Concordia filed jointly for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. The company estimated its assets at $1 million to $10 million and its liabilities at $10 million to $50 million, according to reports on the filing. Valley National Bank was listed with an unsecured claim of about $3.3 million.

Chief executive Pamela Keris-Rubinson has blamed the company's troubles on alleged fraud by her son, Evan Rubinson, who served as president and CEO after his father's death in 2017, according to Guitar.com and reports on the bankruptcy filing. In court filings, she alleged that the company declined severely after Evan Rubinson took over. Those allegations have not been proven in court.

When the company filed for bankruptcy, Keris-Rubinson described the move as "a proactive step to strengthen our financial foundation" and said existing orders, dealer relationships and customer commitments would continue to be honored.

The company also faced other litigation in recent years. Two 2023 lawsuits alleged about $10 million in debt, and Valley National Bank sought foreclosure, according to Guitar World's coverage of the bankruptcy. In a separate dispute, Dean prevailed against the estate of guitarist Dimebag Darrell over the Stealth and Razorback designs.

What it means for Tampa Bay

Armadillo is one of the better-known consumer brands headquartered in the Tampa Bay area, and its guitars are sold worldwide. The company had roughly 100 employees around the time of its bankruptcy filing, according to published accounts.

The fee order adds a sizable claim to a company already reorganizing under court supervision. How and when Gibson collects is likely to be shaped by the bankruptcy process, which generally pauses collection efforts against a debtor and requires creditors to pursue claims through the bankruptcy court.

For guitar players, the bigger question is what remains of Dean's catalog. With the Dean V, Dean Z and Gran Sport ordered out of production, the company is left to rely on other models and its Luna and ddrum lines while it works through bankruptcy.

What's next

The fee award is expected to be addressed alongside Armadillo's Chapter 11 case in Tampa, where the company is seeking to resolve its debts and pending litigation and stabilize the business. The order also closes another chapter in a dispute between the two companies that, by the appeals court's account, began more than two decades ago at the trademark office.